The former pastor of the Vincent Revival Center in Shelby County, Tillman claimed it was a tragic accident when his wife was fatally shot with a shotgun in the bedroom of the church parsonage where the couple lived with their young daughters.

It was a Wednesday night, October 2005, and church members were gathering just 100 yards away for the mid-week service. Tillman and his 40-year-old wife, Janet, were unloading several guns from Tillman's car and moving them to the bedroom for safe-keeping.

"It was about 45 minutes before church was supposed to start'' said Alabama Bureau of Investigation Lt. Scott Bartle. "He waited until there were a lot of people around."

His story was that one of the guns began to slip from his arms. As it did, his wife reached out to help and a gun discharged, hitting her in the back. She died instantly.

Initially, there wasn't much to debunk his story. Janet Tillman's family members, however, didn't buy it and eventually called state investigators to get involved. In stepped Bartle and ABI Cpl. Thomas Whitten. "When I saw the work the Vincent Police Department had done, and read his interview, I knew he was lying,'' Bartle told AL.com.

It would be years before they could arrest and charge Tillman, and they uncovered a bizarre story along the way. That story and the years-long probe will be featured tonight on national television via Investigation Discovery's Handsome Devil series, which "tells the stories of real life lady-killers – men who will have you on top of the world one minute and six feet under the next,'' according to the channel's website. The show will air at 8 p.m. CST.

At the time of his wife's death, investigators said, Tillman was leading a double life. He was having an affair with a young lady in Washington state who later became his wife. The two initially met on the internet.

Tillman's cover story with his girlfriend was that he was a Navy Seal. Molly Bizzarri Tillman thought his absences from Washington were because of his service to the country. He even bought military clothing to further the tale, Bartle said.

Back in Vincent, Janet Tillman thought her husband was on church retreats when he actually was in Washington. Just two months before Janet Tillman was killed, her husband proposed to Bizzarri in grand style at Bonefish Grille in Mississippi.

Shortly after his wife's death, Tillman officially changed his name to Timothy Patrick McNally and moved to Florida. Cell phone records initially alerted detectives to the affair with Molly Bizzarri. But it was a $5,000 loan taken out in Janet Tillman's name after her death that gave investigators what they needed to bring Tillman back to Alabama for questioning.

"We were able to build a forgery case against,'' Bartle said. "We knew we had only one shot to interview him."

In Oct. 2009, Tillman was found guilty of murder. Two months later, Shelby County Circuit Judge Dan Reeves gave Tillman the maximum sentence of life in prison. Tillman pleaded for mercy, but his former father-in-law asked that he never be allowed to walk free again.

In 2011, however, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, in a 3-2 decision, ruled Reeves erred when he allowed Tillman to be tried on a murder charge and a charge of possession of a forged instrument during the same trial. Tillman was sentenced to 10 years after being found guilty of the forgery charge, which stemmed from an accusation that he deposited a loan solicitation check sent to Janet Tillman three months after she was killed.

Prosecutors contended the two crimes were related and showed a common plan or scheme. Later in 2011, a majority on an Alabama state appeals court ordered a new trial for Tillman.